Summer is really over, but let's take a look back!

This kid sure loves the water! This is a picture of him in my brother's kiddie pool when we went to my niece's birthday party in July.  I took him swimming a lot over the summer.  We did a couple "Mom and Tots" swim lessons with my little sister Nathalie and my friend Betsy as our teachers!  Ethan did great as the youngest swim student there.    

Ethan loves books!  Here he is reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."  One of his favorites, and he definitely has his favorites!  If he doesn't like the book, he's quick to push it aside and find the ones he likes.  I read probably 10-15 books to him every day!  It's one of the few times he'll sit still!  He giggles at the pictures he likes and points at things he finds interesting.  He's our little book worm!

We took a Sunday afternoon drive over to Gardner Village and Ethan got to meet some real life ducks!  He's been making this duck sound for weeks now and we thought he could try to converse with these guys.  

He was fascinated by the ducks and we watched them for a while and fed them some of Ethan's treats.

Check out the hat!  This was back in the day when Ethan let us put hats on his head, and he left them on.   Those days are gone now, maybe one day he'll decide he likes them again.  

What a cheeser!  This was at Brandon's family reunion up in Idaho.  He was hamming it up for Brandon and his camera!  

I call this Ethan's "The Rock" pose.  You know the former WWF wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.  He has this raised eyebrow, intimidating look he likes to use, plus with Ethan's power fist, this is sure to scare any of Ethan's opponents as he sits in the arms of his loving Grandma.   

Ethan gets his first dip in the pretty chilly reservoir up by the place we have Brandon's family reunion.  He wasn't a big fan of being in this floaty, he was happy to sit on the shore and try to eat the rocks he picked up. 

Daddy and Ethan hanging out at the reunion.  Ethan found a toy to chew on.  This kid has 3 teeth now!   

Here's Ethan with his cousin Justin army crawling it up the hallway of our condo.  At this time Ethan could only really army crawl, and his cousin was ordering him around like one of his cadets in boot camp!  They were having a ton of fun together!

Pushing his cart!  Notice the hand weights in the cart to help slow him down!  He can walk pretty good holding on to this and it's pretty funny watching him go.  

Summer went pretty quickly like it usually does, I loved getting to spend time with Ethan all day.  Now I'm back to work, part-time, which has been great, though I do miss the full-time pay check! 

Today we had our first taste of winter with snow actually falling in big, fat flakes.  It only lasted an hour or so, but managed to coat the mountains in white.  It seems we didn't really have much of a Spring and went straight from Winter to Summer, and now here we are skipping Fall, which is my favorite time of year!  I get so excited seeing the fall colors light up the mountains first, then creep into the valley, then bright orange pumpkins at the store ready to take home to carve for Halloween, and of course October is my birth month, so I think that has something to do with it too!

So so long Summer, hello winter!